Printing-ink.



UNITED STATES PATENT ()FFICE.

HENRY NOEL POTTER, OF NEW YORK, N. Y., ASSIGNOB, TO GEORGE WESTINGHOUSE, OF PITTSBURG, PENNSYLVANIA.

PRINTING-INK.

Specification of Letters Patent.

Patented Dec. 29, 1908.

To all whom it may concern:

Be it known that I, HENRYNOEL POTTER, a citizen of the United States, and resident of New York, county of New York, State of New York, have invented certainnewand useful Improvements in Printing Inks, of

which the following is a specification.

particles, this application is exclusively concerned.

Printing inks may be broadly classified as black inks and colored inks. All printing inks contain coloring matter and a varnish. The applicant is advised that black inks are made only of pigment and varnish, while colored inks usually contain a third ingredient called a base. A base is understood to be a finely subdivided solid ingeneral chemically inert to the other ink ingredients introduced to thicken the varnish and lessen the amount of relatively expensive dry coloring matter to be used to give the desired consistency.

A base may and often does materially affect the physical properties of the ink containing it so that certain substances are good as bases, others are not.

The two bases most in use are probably aluminum hydrate for the best grades of ink, and blanc fine or precipitated barium sulfate for cheaper grades and special purposes. Many other substances have een" tried.

I have discovered a novel white base consisting of silica, silicon dioxid, SiO,,, made by pi'oducing silicon monoxid in an electric rnace y the partial reduction of silica or otherwise (seeapplicants application it 238,925, of December 30, 1904,) and discharging the said monoxid into air and there allowin it to burn back into dioxid in the form 0 a fine amorphous powder which is white when dry but almost perfectly transparent when wet with oil or other liquid aving a high index or refraction of light.

urposes be divided into 'The name given to the dioxid powder by myself and my associates is diox. 'Under that name it is already known to those who are informed upon the progress of my work. This white dioxid powder is notfine or so soft as the monox powder described in another application of even date with this one, but it is colorless and does not cake into lumps and mixes easily into inks with pigments and varnishes of all kinds. It is particularly valuable as a substitute for aluminum hydrate as a base in light colored inks, particularly such as are more orless translucent and are used in plural color processes and elsewhere where a plurality of colors are superposed to secure intermediate color effects. Its advantage over aluminum hydrate lies particularly in its ease of grinding. It might be thought that this diox base being simply silica cannot differ much from infusorial earth or ground uartz but it does differ physically from t ese substances as it is much finer than it .would be possible to grind quartz without impractical expense and it is not so absorbent as infusorial earth and being composed of solid as distinguished from hollow particles, it acts differently and better as regards drying of the varnish and in other respects.

I append formulae for inks of several colors selected from a great number of such inks that have been successfully tried.

FORMULE FOR mox' INKS.

I claim as my invention:

1. A printing ink composed of a suitable varnish, a coloring ingredient, and silicon dioxid.

2. A printing ink composed of a suitable varnish, a coloring ingredient, and that form of silicon dioxid resulting from oxidizing sili- New York, and State of New York, this 28th con rnkonoxid. k day of June A. D. 1907.

3. printing in containing as one ingredient the finely divided product resulting HENRY NOEL POTTER 5 from oxidizing finely subdivided silicon Witnesses:

monoxid. WM. H. CAPEL,

Signed at New York, in the county of] THOS. H. BROWN. 

